So why is Rage Against the Machine on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Pure, finely honed, explosive, catchy, crushing, incendiary.
These words ricocheted around my mind while I listened to the blistering debut by Rage Against the Machine recently at the gym (as part of my Forever Quest to get into shape).
Then in my mind’s eye – pulling me away from the treadmill and my Slow Trot to Nowhere – I was back in the dorms at Binghamton University in late 1993.
Jake, a childhood friend who always seemed to be a few steps ahead of me musically, announced that “Rage and Quicksand are playing in Montreal, and we’re going, yo.”
There was a lot of yo talk back then.
I hadn’t even heard of “Rage” at the time, and didn’t make that road trip. This may have been for the best as it turned into one of those Legendary Stories retold many times over the years.
The tl;dr on it, as they say these days, is that a quarter keg was consumed in the back of the van on the way up to the show, followed by a smash cut to some very sad Returning Heroes half passed out on the way home. The sadness was vastly exacerbated by my man Lou refusing to turn on the heater to “save on gas.”
Anyway, my missing out on that roadie and the stories it brought home led me to check out this oddly named band with an unsettling picture of a Buddhist monk lighting himself on fire in Saigon in 1963.
I’ve always been moved by music that makes me feel, and man, by the first time Zack de la Rocha launches into…
Hey yo, it’s just another bombtrack
I was feeling. I was feeling big time. Rage was the correct word all right: finely tuned, exquisite, searing.
And for 19-year-old me, the important thing was that it kicked ass.
It kicked all the ass in the truest crystalline form of what punk rock is supposed to do, with both middle fingers up to anyone who ain’t with the program.
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn
Later, I’d study RATM’s lyrics much more closely and think about what they were trying to accomplish, but in that moment the kick assery was enough.
And then “Bombtrack” segueing into “Killing in the Name” is like unfair levels of mind melting hip-hop-meets-heavy metal fusion dialed up to eviscerate the sonic universe.
Several years later, I saw Rage Against the Machine perform live in Manhattan at a venue called the Roseland, and it was the single most exciting and intense concert that I’ve experienced in my life.
One of the peak moments came during the portion of the song when de la Rocha whipped the crowd into a frenzy with the repetition of FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME.
At one point, the band and production did the thing where they stop playing and turn on all the house lights for a second to allow the crowd to fully take over the proceedings. I recall the light flooding my eyes and seeing the entire assemblage raising both middle fingers up high and proud in righteous agreement with the band’s sentiment.
A very cool moment for new college grad me, but it also fused into my thinking about what the band was getting at.
In other words, why were they raging against the machine in the first place?
When you dig into the lyrics of “Killing in the Name,” for example, you feel a visceral sense of oppression at the hands of a corrupt, racist government and police state that has ignited a sense of anger.
Rage.
How many news stories from recent years could this apply to?
Those who died are justified
For wearing the badge, they’re the chosen whites
You justify those that died
By wearing the badge, they’re the chosen whites
In contemplating “Killing in the Name” from the vantage point of the mid-2020s, about a year into the Trump 2.0 era, it’s striking and creepy and illuminating how prescient this song still is. How vital it remains in terms of both sound and message.
Rage wasn’t just furious – they were reporting what they saw.
We’re deep into this piece now, and I’m finally able to reveal my favorite song on the album, which is “Know Your Enemy.” In fact, it’s my favorite RATM track of all.
There’s a propulsion and excitement that permeates every synapse of this one, and Tom Morello’s guitar riff breaks the charts.
It’s here where I started thinking about the all-time great pairings in rock history.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney (and please do add George Harrison into the mix if you like). Jack and Meg White. The brothers Gallagher.
Most of all I thought about the pairing of Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello with relation to Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
It was Tom Morello’s sizzling yet melodic, primal yet tuneful guitar work that helped cement that connection.
But here’s the other thing that people tend to overlook: Rage grooves. Morello’s riffs don’t just shred – they swing as well, with a hard funk and hip-hop backbone that Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk lock into like a piston. Like a machine.
The other side of it is de la Rocha. There’s a reason why so many so-called nu metal or “rap rock” musical outfits are, shall we say, less than successful. De la Rocha is less standard musician or rapper than a fiery poet with a microphone exquisitely skilled at honing his fiery passions over a blistering metal/hard rock concoction.*
* I’ll call out Downset’s spectacular self-titled debut album, #52 of best 1,000 albums ever, as another counterexample for a genre more often tied to the likes of Limp Bizkit and Korn.
He also deserves immense credit as a songwriter. As someone who tends to write pretty concisely – though feel free to cast this piece aside in your estimation there – and who aspires to be clever (same), I appreciate RATM’s whip-tight lyrics that are packed with bright turns of phrase and muscular sarcasm.
Great example from “Know Your Enemy” that stays locked in my head for weeks at a time:
With the D the E the F the I the A the N the C the E
Mind of a revolutionary
So clear the lane
The finger to the land of the chains
What? The land of the free?
Whoever told you that is your enemy?
“Freedom” is a stunning statement at the end of the album, and something of a thesis statement for the band. With apologies for getting slightly music nerdy, the use of musical dynamics on this track is impressive as hell: the spacing of the instrumentation, the way de la Rocha whispers anger is a gift, leading to an explosion of guitars.
There’s also the way that “Freedom” grows and evolves in stages across six minutes, each level taking you to the next, but importantly there’s a constant toggle between loud and soft modes, the soft all the more tense and foreboding for it.
By the time we get to the final section, the final level, there’s a massive pent up energy, a rage, that rips through with repeated volleys of FREEDOM followed by YEAH RIGHT.
That toggle back and forth lyrically between this is what you thought you had but this is what you really have reminds me why it’s not surprising that RATM later covered Devo’s devilishly satirical take on conformity, “Beautiful World,” on Renegades(#342).
Looking back at the 30+ years since I first listened to “Bombtrack,” I have certainly changed quite a lot, but Rage Against the Machine, as both musical and political statement, hasn’t.
Which is both testimony to one of the best albums of all time, #10 of the best 1,000 albums ever, and a distressing reminder of the state of the United States and the world circa the mid-2020s.
Some stats & info about Rage Against the Machine
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Alternative Metal, Metal, Rap, Rap Metal, Rap-Rock, Rock Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #221
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Rage Against the Machine released? 1992
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #10 out of 1,000
Rage Against the Machine on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Rage Against the Machine that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.